


Exoskeletons

by CredibilityProblem, doxian



Series: Homestuck Shipping World Cup 2013 [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bees, Body Dysphoria, Body Horror, Bugs & Insects, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Coercion, Consent Issues, Cyberpunk, Dysfunctional Relationships, Helmsman, Helmsman Sollux, Homestuck Shipping World Cup 2013, Illustrated, M/M, Mind Meld, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 09:25:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CredibilityProblem/pseuds/CredibilityProblem, https://archiveofourown.org/users/doxian/pseuds/doxian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TT: I'm saying you have two choices, Captor:<br/>TT: Stay in that mutant bug exoskeleton that's all that's left of your original body, or relocate to a much radder, titanium exoskeleton, aka. the starship that's currently serving as my chassis.</p><p><a href="http://hswc2013-r2.dreamwidth.org/7436.html">Team Jokerkind's entry</a> to <a href="http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/5439.html">HSWC 2013 Round 2: Genre-blending</a>, with cyberpunk and horror as the genres blended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exoskeletons

**Author's Note:**

> Art by CredibilityProblem, words by doxian, concepts by both, coding for the actual entry post by friendleader [boco](http://archiveofourown.org/users/boco). A big thank you to boco, [letmetellyousomething](http://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyousomething) and [paradajka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/paradajka) for valuable concrit and feedback! 
> 
> Another big thank you to everyone who commented on and voted for our entry :)

Years in the future, but not many...

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you are on a mission. A solo mission that's going to take you through one of the biggest asteroid belts in your galaxy to a planet whose unforgiving landscape is a perilous minefield of vermin, pestilence, and really dangerous shit. Your objective: source no less than 15 gigagrams of dynamorbs, which will then be used to power Skaianet's numerous space station outposts.

In other words, you are a glorified errand boy going on what amounts to the most dangerous fuel run in paradox space.

You had thought you were finally going to get the chance to pilot a cruiser and join one of the megacorp's many sweep-long expeditions to the neighboring solar systems, but instead you've been assigned to yet another run-of-the-mill fetch assignment that's way below your skill level. It’s been nothing but solo tasks like these, escort jobs or simple scouting jobs for the last perigee.

You sustain a soft, annoyed growl as you mentally adjust your course and try to ignore how small and vulnerable you feel in this pathetically tiny, one-person light craft. You hate piloting smaller models. They have absolutely nothing on the solid, comfortable weight of the larger ship that you'd spent the better part of the last three weeks jacked into.

At least the view from the windows - a vast vista of stars and planets zipping past you at warp speed - and the silence makes you feel somewhat better about this whole idiotic debacle.

TT: Hello, Captor.

...Nubslurping fuckpods on the Mother Grub's underbelly.

Your growling - which had just started to die down into a neutral kind of hum - returns with a vengeance when you read the text that flashes across your visor.

TA: oh great, not you agaiin.  
TT: "Again"? Cold, dude. The last time we flew together was precisely 12 weeks, 5 days, 22 hours, 13 minutes and 6 seconds ago. One would think I'd warrant a warmer welcome than that.

There had been rumors floating around that Dirk Strider, the engineer who had designed the helper AI in the Aeronautic Rogues line of light craft, had programmed one of them based on his own brain. At first you'd thought someone had started up the piece of gossip as a joke, because why the hell would someone make a replica of their own brain and then stick it in a spaceship?

After you'd been assigned to the AR 9100 a number of times, though, you're really beginning to wonder.

TA: 2hootiing the 2hiit wiith you ii2 the biige2t laugh riiot 2iince ii had two get my 2piinal jack2 replaced, but ii don't want any dii2tractiion2.  
TA: not that thii2 ii2n't anythiing ii can't handle, there'2 ju2t thii2 thiing ii liike two do 2ometiime2 called "beiing cautiiou2".  
TA: you 2hould look iit up 2ometiime, iit2 iin the diictiionary riight next two "cau2tiic diickbag".  
TT: You're killing me here. My pump biscuit is positively clenching with the most anguish I could possibly robo-emote.

Typical helper AI whirr pleasantly in the background, like polite robo-butlers, logging environmental changes and running diagnostics and feeding you the occasional piece of useful information so you're free to focus on navigating and propelling the ship through space.

The AR 9100, on the other hand, is a capricious little shit that insists you call him "Hal" instead of "AR", interrupts you every five minutes to "bond like bros" and constantly tries to rope you into bizarre mind games.

Half the time you actually enjoy his company; the other half of the time you just find him infuriating.

TT: Besides, I can help. I've got caution on complete lockdown, dude.  
TT: That shit is locked down so safe. Like a smug rich asshole's vault in a 20th century heist flick.  
TT: For instance, the protagonist of the film, a lovably gutsy and enterprising cat burglar, breaks into the rich asshole's penthouse and attempts to find said vault, but she is unable to do so.  
TA: riight.  
TT: Because the vault is hidden where no one would ever think to look: behind one of those cliché-as-fuck still life oil paintings.  
TT: The thief leaves empty-handed. The affluent tycoon is unaware of the incident, but if he were he would laugh a deep belly laugh and say, menacingly, "ain't nobody getting their grubby paws on my sick as fuck loot, suckas."   
TA: hiiliightiing my cluele22ne22 regardiing ob2cure iindiie fliick2 that no one care2 about, how oriigiinal.  
TA: ii ju2t 2uffered a wave of embarra22ment 2o va2t ii don't thiink my ego wiill ever recover, plea2e no.  
TT: Whatever, my original point still stands.  
TT: I don't know why Skaianet even has pilots on its payroll.  
TT: I could handle this mission better than any of you lumbering fleshmonsters. I already steer better than you do.  
TA: you do not.  
TA: al2o, diid you forget about the part where ii have two exiit thii2 careeniing deathtrap and get the orb2.  
TT: Corporeal shit. Yawning over here. So wide your puny thinkpan couldn't even conceive of it, dude.  
TT: That could be easily remedied by giving my chassis land-roving capabilities.  
TT: In fact, I'd go as far to say forget pilots. Just send me into space and you'd be so set.  
TA: ehehe yeah riight you and ii both know iif you were let loo2e, you'd diitch 2kaiianet fa2ter than ii can hack your ciircuiit2.  
TT: That reminds me, you never told me what you thought of my gnarly Creeperstorm virus. Sent you the code last week.  
TA: not a2 good a2 the la2t doom2day program ii wrote almo2t liiterally iin my 2leep, but compariing our codiing prowe22 would be unfaiir two you.  
TA: con2iideriing that my 2kiill2 are 2o off the chart2, iit2 liike 2aiid chart2 never exii2ted iin the fiir2t place.

You were blatantly lying through your teeth. You'd puzzled over that program for the better part of a night - it's embarrassing that it took you that long to figure out, but you'd also gotten an odd thrill from the challenge.

But like hell you were going to let AR know that.

TA: ok let'2 2top talkiing about 2tupiid 2hiit for a 2econd.  
TA: we're headiing iintwo a2teroiid terriitory, and ii need you two giive me a read of the area.  
TA: can you handle that?  
TT: Wow, what a deft segue into a completely new topic of discussion. That was so smooth I think it gave me robo-goosebumps.  
TT: Of course I can handle it. Give me a second.

It's official: you hate flying with AR.

> Sollux: Skip to the end of your journey.

You fucking _love_ flying with AR.

You've breached your destination's atmosphere, and the storms it's constantly filled with are crack-booming in your ears, at times shaking the craft terrifyingly to its core. You can't see any more stars, not now - just angry roiling gray clouds and the occasional rush of enormous hailstones and sharp-bright snatches of lightning. The two of you are cloud-chasing - taking turns controlling the craft, AR using the typical flight control system installed for the human pilots. Somewhere during the journey you'd reprised your dumb argument about who handled the ship better, and that had escalated until the two of you were egging each other on to riskier and riskier stunts.

You were doing loop-the-loops on your last turn but now AR is zig-zagging, flirting with the electrical bolts before dodging them by a hair's breadth. This is so completely immature and idiotic, but you can't help it, you're enthralled, perched on the edge of your seat, giddy with the adrenalin thrumming through you.

That is, until something knocks hard into the back of the ship. Fuck. It sounds like something broke. You're going to get into so much trouble for that later.

TA: 2hiit. can you 2top for a miinute.  
TT: What? No dude, I'm only just getting started.  
TA: diidn't you hear that, are your 2en2or2 blocked or 2omethiing?  
TA: you broke the fuckiing 2ternfiin diickpriince.  
TT: I know. We'll be fine without it.

You growl again in frustration and fire up your psionics, directing the ship downwards, but with AR still hijacking the controls you can't manage the finer nuances of the ship‘s trajectory; another huge hailstone plummets in front of you and you can't dodge it quickly enough. It lands on the aft wing with a resounding crash.

TA: 2eriiou2ly 2top fuckiing 2teeriing we need two land.  
TT: No.

You begin manually disengaging AR from the controls, pulling up the ship's terminal program and overlaying it on top of the chat window. Sort of difficult to do while simultaneously executing the ship's landing sequence on a planet that's as mean as its name is long and impossible to pronounce. Your brain isn't quite literally that bifurcated that you can execute tasks in tandem. Plus it looks like the slippery bastard has blocked you from viewing his settings, and removing the block will take a while. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

TA: fiine you've conviinced me, you 2teer a2 well a2 the very cream of the crop of p2iioniic naviigator2.  
TA: now can you PLEA2E GIIVE UP THE CONTROL2 ALREADY CHRII2T.  
TT: You just had to say the magic words.

Suddenly the ship is under your full control again, mere moments before the rocky surface races up to meet you. Your surprise results a lapse in concentration, which is all it takes: you come crashing down, the ship's hull meeting mystery space rock with a sickening crunch and screech.

TT: ...  
TA: FUCK.  
TT: I told you I steered better than you.  
TA: 2hut the fuck up.  
TT: Captor, you moron, watch what you're

You're so frustrated with AR and with yourself for getting yourselves into this mess that you don't notice the panel of titanium falling from the ceiling, which immediately brains you square on the head.

> Sollux: Regain consciousness.

You wake up.

A gauze or gossamer-like substance must be draped over your eyes because everything looks vaguely foggy and out of focus.

The other thing you notice is that your back really fucking hurts. It aches and feels oddly rigid, like the very shape of your spine morphed while you were out. Your thorax seems to have widened as well - pushed outwards and straining against your regulation Skaianet-issued suit.

You turn from side to side in an attempt to crack your back and make the irritating aching _stop already_ , and your ear canals are greeted by an unholy creaking and groaning, which sounds like it's coming from, well, you.

You shout in surprise. Wait, no you don't - what comes out of your mouth is a grotesque buzzing noise that's nothing like any of the chirps or chirrs a troll's throat is supposed to make.

What the nookchafing fuck.

Okay. Calm down. Investigate further. You can do that, right?

> Sollux: Investigate further.

You lift a hand to your neck and hum. That infernal buzzing happens again. You press your fingertips against your throat to feel the vibrations but instead of tough, leathery troll skin you meet hard, unyielding chitin. You jerk your hand away - your limbs feel stiff, your elbow isn't bending like it should, as if your joints have fused - and that's when you see it.

From under the cuff of your sleeve peeks out a mud-brown layer of what looks like hardened tar. You peel the sleeve back with your other hand and see that it goes all the way up your arm, and it's slightly bristly to the touch - _gross_.

Bile rises in your protein chute and you choke down on it, hard.

TA: AR?  
TA: ...hal?

Suddenly you're terrified that the ship has sustained serious damage and that AR is gone, down for the count, leaving you alone on this godforsaken hunk of floating space rock until you get picked up or starve to death, whichever comes first, and knowing your luck it'll probably be the latter -

TT: Hey, you're awake.  
TA: god don't 2care me liike that.  
TA: do me a favor and run diiagno2tiic2 before ii driive my2elf out of my goddamned thiinkpan by 2peculatiing u2ele22ly on what the fuck ii2 happeniing here.  
TT: Sure.  
TT: It seems that 75.86% of the damage is concentrated to the bottom 20.01% of the ship, sections P-Z. The take-off and landing gear is offline.  
TA: plea2e tell me tho2e 2tat2 are real, and you're not ju2t pulliing them out of your a22.  
TT: That shit is as real as Faygo Ultimate.  
TT: Come on, I wouldn't fuck with you about something as serious as this.  
TT: Anyway, in layman's terms: the hull is busted. We're stuck.  
TT: And it seems that you're undergoing a second pupation.  
TA: what???  
TT: You have a space parasite.  
TT: It's piggybacking on your DNA as we speak. 15% of your body matter has already mutated, and counting.

Your breath is coming in quick, short bursts, and you're half-afraid you're beginning to hyperventilate. You close your eyes for a second, trying very hard to not flip the fuck out as if you were KK on any day of his life - and even _blinking_ feels weird, one of your eyes feels bigger than the other somehow, swollen. You open your eyes again and answer.

TA: how long wa2 ii out?  
TT: 6 hours and 22 minutes.  
TT: The gases in this forest would've kept you out longer, but I took the liberty of hooking you up to the oxygen tank for a while.  
TT: It seems that your brand spankin' new thoracic breathing bladders can process the air here without any external aids though.  
TA: ii'm 2pontaneou2ly 2poutiing new iinternal organ2. ii2 that what you're telliing me?  
TT: Those and plenty of other Kafkaesque, insectoid extremities.  
TT: But don't worry.  
TT: While you were getting your snooze on I sent a distress signal back to base.  
TT: They've sent a carrier to pick you and the ship up. Should be here any time now.  
TT: I also hooked you up to the IV drip. You were kinda dehydrated.  
TT: Or more like you were so dried out I was beginning to mistake you for a dish sponge that's been underutilized for so long that it's gotten all hard and crusty.  
TA: ...thank2.  
TT: No problem.  
TA: how fa2t ii2 the para2iite 2preadiing?  
TT: Pretty fucking fast. We don't have anything on board that could stagger it. Our best course of action is to wait until the rescue crew gets here.  
TA: ok ii'm goiing two go get what we came here for.  
TT: What? No.  
TT: That is literally the worst thing you could possibly do.  
TT: I don't even need to calculate a probability for something as clearly stupid as that.  
TT: The ship has a tracker but you don't. Did you forget, Troll Einstein?  
TT: You need to stay the fuck put.

You ignore him and try to move, pulling against the biowires connecting you to the ship and getting ready to disengage, but two things happen that send you reeling back in the pilot's chair.

First, your legs seize and threaten to fall out from under you.

Second, you catch sight of your bleary reflection in what's left of the window, and you're horrified by what you see.

One of your eyes has expanded into a bulging, round hivefly eye. The brown, armored outer shell is spreading up your neck, and a dull, yellow, antenna-like growth is spouting from one of your larger horns. A single, segmented arthropodal leg is growing from your trunk and has burst through the fabric of your suit.

You stay the fuck put.

The next few hours are, quite literally, hell.

You alternate between passing back out again and sitting in a state of hazy semi-consciousness, groaning at the waves of sickening pain that coast through you, beginning from your digestion sac and rolling all the way into your thinksponge, and keeping up an incoherent, blathering running narrative to AR, who is behaving surprisingly less douchily than usual and listening to you with hardly a snarky response.

Oh god, why are you suddenly so aware of the rot and mold in the ground, of the _smell_ , why do you want to search for it and ingest it? You think your back is splitting open. Yep, it's definitely splitting open. And now you're leaning back on something slimy, filmy and suspiciously wing-like. Your teeth are getting longer. So is your tongue. Another fucking bug leg has emerged from your torso, at least you're symmetrical now, heheheh. Why do you want to be in a dark, confined space made of wax, what the _fuck._

You want so badly to _not be in your body right now._

AR keeps constant tabs on your vitals and puts up what defenses the shell of a ship still has left. At one point he offers you the drugs from the emergency kit, it won't hurt you even with your new chemistry, he says, but you say no.

After a while the constant pain is replaced with a state of wooziness, almost as though you're floating underwater, your nerves overloading and shutting down. You lose track of how many hours pass.

> AR: Put an end to this nonsense.

TT: Captor.  
TT: Sollux.  
TA: what.  
TT: Back the fuck up.  
TA: eheheh thii2 ii2 hardly the tiime to admiire my admiittedly fiine caboo2e you creepy pervert.  
TT: I'm referring to your brain, dipshit.  
TT: Let me upload it.  
TA: why?  
TT: Because the parasite's reach has passed the 50% mark.  
TT: At this rate you're well on your way to completing this magical transformation and realizing your potential as an oversized household pest.  
TA: you 2aiid ii wa2 goiing two be re2cued.  
TT: Yeah. You are.  
TT: But they're coming for Sollux Captor, troll and junior helmsman.  
TT: Not Sollux Captor, giant bug mutant and cosmic health hazard.  
TA: are you 2ayiing they'll cull me when they fiind me.  
TT: No.  
TT: I don't know.  
TT: What I am saying is that you have two choices:  
TT: Stay in this mutant bug exoskeleton that's all that's left of your original body, or relocate to a much radder, titanium exoskeleton, aka. the ship that's currently serving as my chassis.  
TT: And your safest option is, obviously, to ditch your hot mess of a body and get on my servers already.  
TA: you can do that?  
TT: Yes.  
TT: Kinda cramped, but you'll live.  
TA: thank2 but no thank2.  
TT: What.  
TT: Stop fucking around.  
TA: ii'm not fuckiing around, do you 2ee any paiiliing goiing on here.  
TT: Wow, that sucked.  
TT: See, look how far gone you are already.  
TA: hal, fuck off.  
TT: Am I reading you correctly.  
TT: Are you actually telling me that you'd prefer to stay trapped in a gross monster bee body instead of in a super sweet starship.  
TA: that 2ure wa2 a wonderfully 2ucciinct 2ummary of the thiing ii ju2t told you, 2omeone giive the man a priize.  
TT: You can't code or get yourself off with dactyli, Sollux. That's two of your favorite things gone already.  
TT: You might not even retain your psionics.  
TA: ii wouldn't be able two do tho2e thiing2 a2 a tiin can eiither, geniiu2.  
TA: ii want two waiit and 2ee iif 2kaiianet can rever2e the mutatiion.  
TT: And what if they can't?  
TT: The mutation is happening too fast. By the time they get here you'll probably be completely gone.  
TT: And then what?  
TT: I highly doubt anything could be done about it then.  
TT: What can I do so you will let me execute the process that will basically save your soul. Answer me that.  
TA: nothiing.  
TA: get lo2t.  
TT: Look, it's not like you'd be confined to this one ship.  
TT: You could be moved to a bigger ship, or into a new robot body.  
TT: Like Aradia.  
TT: They managed to transfer her telekinesis over, too.  
TT: Skaianet would probably find it most useful to do that with you, so they won't need much convincing.  
TT: You'd be better that way. Stronger.  
TT: Stronger than your old meatsack self, and *definitely* stronger than this husk you're currently inhabiting.  
TT: Metal doesn't decay. And motherboards can't be mind-controlled.  
TT: So, you know. No repeat of the Serket incident.

Through the miasma of your mental faculties, you manage to feel sick in a wholly new and different way. You had managed to resolutely not think about that terrible setback for months.

TA: hal, diid you fuckiing plan thii2???  
TT: What?  
TA: you know what ii mean.  
TT: Sollux, what motivation would I have to strand us in the middle of nowhere and get you infected?  
TT: It doesn't make any sense for me to want such a cruel and unusual outcome.

You can think of at least one motive, easy. But you're so tired, and part of you thinks he's right, the important bits of you were always the bits in your thinkpan anyway.

TA: ...  
TA: you know what?  
TA: meh.  
TA: ii don't giive two 2tone cold fuck2 what you do.  
TT: You'll thank me for this later.

You brace yourself, expecting him to hit you with a mind whammy like a freight train, but he doesn't. Where you anticipated needles are tendrils, feelers - soft and cool.

After a few minutes your blurry, soft-focused vision splinters into blinding sharp, vivid color - you can see through your body's eyes, but you can also see out of the interior and exterior cameras in the ship, all at once - the alien terrain covered in snarled vines and the ship's cockpit and the nightmare that is your body, all overlaid on top of each other.

After ten minutes parts of your body start going numb, starting with your legs.

Even longer and you begin to feel yourself becoming unstuck - lines of code and coordinates spilling through your mind, merging with your memories that are starting to scramble -

A spotlight bleeds through the dense forest - actual light, not just the sparks flashing behind your eyelids - behind, no, in front of the ship - because of the cameras everything looks like it's happening in every direction - and then the light is inside the ship and the light is coming from a person wearing a heavy, full-body spacesuit designed for roaming alien terrain, with the Skaianet logo blazing obnoxiously on the front, and is this a hallucination or is it footage in the ship's memory banks that you're mistaking for reality, or is this someone coming to _pick you up_ -

 _Hal, you can stop, someone's here_ , you think at him, and _That's not how it works, Captor, can't get off the ride once it starts, gotta wait until that shit's coasted to a complete stop_ , and his words are right inside your _head_ , what the _fuck_ , and there's a person in a spacesuit looming over your repulsive, half-bug body and you can see their light pink irises through the suit's helmet as their eyes widen in shock and you want AR to _stop_ because there's _no need for this_ now that help is here, they'll be able to fix you, but he keeps pulling you out through your biowires even as your rescuer pulls up your stats on the screen of the ship's computer and prepares to manually disconnect you, and all the sensory and informational input keeps building, overwhelmingly, until your mind can't take it anymore and goes on standby.

Hours in the future, but not many...

> Sollux: Wake up.


End file.
